You'll need to configure a few things like the IP address if you want it to be fixed. FreeNAS picks 192.168.1.250 by default, so if that doesn't work for you you'll need to change it. The remainder of the configuration happens from the Web interface.

Connecting to the FreeNAS box from a web browser requires you to enter the IP address you configured as in http://192.168.1.250. This will bring up a login box with a default username of admin and password of freenas. Once you get logged in you'll see a clean looking web page with a menu bar across the top. The next steps you need to accomplish would be to add your disk drives from the Disks > Management option. Next you have to format the drives from the Disks > Format menu.

At this point you have a couple of options. In our case we have two 1.5 TB drives installed that will appear as two distinct drives by default. FreeNAS supports several RAID options and JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) to make multiple drives look like a single volume. To create a software RAID you must select Software RAID when you format your disks. Once that's done you have to go back and format the RAID (or JBOD) in the native UFS file system. Next comes creating a mount point for your new storage and, finally, you must enable the services you want to provide such as CIFS or FTP.

Bottom Line

Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 drives can be had for under $125 from several different Internet vendors. Couple that with the $299 base price for the ARTiGO A2000 plus another $50 for memory, and you're looking at around $600 for a full-featured, 3 TB NAS box. If you do a little searching around you'll find that price to be extremely competitive (meaning much cheaper) than anything you could find already packaged in a ready-to-use box.

The VIA ARTiGO A2000 does its job quietly and efficiently. You can barely hear the fan running in a quiet room. Coupling that with the bargain-priced Seagate drives and FreeNAS software makes for a solid and cost effective storage solution. Why look anywhere else?